Volume Ii Part 31 (2/2)
And lo, the fleet brown-flocked on the sea-verge!
XVII
Oars pulled: they streamed in harbour; without cheer For welcome shadowed round the heaving bier.
They, whose approach in such rare pomp and stress Of numbers the free islanders dismayed At Tyranny come masking to oppress, Found Lycophron this breathless, this lone-laid.
XVIII
Who smote the man thrown open to young joy?
The image of the mother of his boy Came forth from his unwary breast in wreaths, With eyes. And shall a woman, that extinct, Smite out of dust the Powerful who breathes?
Her loved the son; her served; they lay close-linked!
XIX
Dead was he, and demanding earth. Demand Sharper for vengeance of an instant hand, The Tyrant in the father heard him cry, And raged a plague; to prove on free h.e.l.lenes How prompt the Tyrant for the Persian dye; How black his G.o.ds behind their marble screens.
SOLON
I
The Tyrant pa.s.sed, and friendlier was his eye On the great man of Athens, whom for foe He knew, than on the sycophantic fry That broke as waters round a galley's flow, Bubbles at prow and foam along the wake.
Solidity the Thunderer could not shake, Beneath an adverse wind still stripping bare, His kinsman, of the light-in-cavern look, From thought drew, and a countenance could wear Not less at peace than fields in Attic air Shorn, and shown fruitful by the reaper's hook.
II
Most enviable so; yet much insane To deem of minds of men they grow! these sheep, By fits wild horses, need the crook and rein; Hot bulls by fits, pure wisdom hold they cheap, My Lawgiver, when fiery is the mood.
For ones and twos and threes thy words are good; For thine own government are pillars: mine Stand acts to fit the herd; which has quick thirst, Rejecting elegiacs, though they s.h.i.+ne On polished bra.s.s, and, worthy of the Nine, In showering columns from their fountain burst.
III
Thus museful rode the Tyrant, princely plumed, To his high seat upon the sacred rock: And Solon, blank beside his rule, resumed The meditation which that pa.s.sing mock Had buffeted awhile to sallowness.
He little loved the man, his office less, Yet owned him for a flower of his kind.
Therefore the heavier curse on Athens he!
The people grew not in themselves, but, blind, Accepted sight from him, to him resigned Their hopes of stature, rootless as at sea.
IV
As under sea lay Solon's work, or seemed By turbid sh.o.r.e-waves beaten day by day; Defaced, half formless, like an image dreamed, Or child that fas.h.i.+oned in another clay Appears, by strangers' hands to home returned.
But shall the Present tyrannize us? earned It was in some way, justly says the sage.
One sees not how, while husbanding regrets; While tossing scorn abroad from righteous rage, High vision is obscured; for this is age When robbed--more infant than the babe it frets!
V
Yet see Athenians treading the black path Laid by a prince's shadow! well content To wait his pleasure, s.h.i.+vering at his wrath: They bow to their accepted Orient With offer of the all that renders bright: Forgetful of the growth of men to light, As creatures reared on Persian milk they bow.
Unripe! unripe! The times are overcast.
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